GTP sells out.

Ahem.

I suppose a little explanation is in order.

From its inception, Get the Picture has been a labor of love on my part.  I didn’t start it and nurture it with the aim of it becoming a money making venture.  And that hasn’t changed.

WordPress made it easy to stay pure.  It’s the best of the basic (read:  free) blogging platforms that I experimented with when I launched this blog and it didn’t allow for third party advertising to be promoted.

Until now, that is.  WP introduced a beta program that allows certain bloggers to run AdSense ads on their sites.  GTP qualified and I’ve decided to take a modest plunge.

It’s a pretty easy way to generate revenue and it’s hopefully not too obtrusive.  If I find that it’s not meeting my expectations in either way, rest assured that I’ll take it down from my site.

I do hope this bit of commercialization doesn’t offend anyone too much.  Please let me know if it’s a big problem for you.

If it walks like a bye week, and it quacks like a bye week…

This season’s Alabama-Georgia State game has the stench of epic mismatch emanating from it.

… On Oct. 7, 1916, Georgia Tech beat Cumberland 222-0 in the most lopsided college football game ever. Alabama won’t beat Georgia State that bad. You have to really want to humiliate your opponent to score a touchdown every two minutes for an entire game. But if you examine the rosters, you have to wonder whether Houston’s 100-6 squeaker over Tulsa in 1968 — the modern record for the worst defeat — might be in jeopardy.

Any team that plays in the SEC and schedules marquee non-conference opponents — like Alabama has done again this season with a game against Penn State — deserves a Western Kentucky or Chattanooga on the slate.

But those are at least established programs with experienced college football players. Georgia State, coached by former Crimson Tide head man Bill Curry, has never played a game. The Panthers signed 26 players in February to go with six transfers and a bunch of guys who showed up for an open tryout…

Exactly why does Alabama need the game moved to an earlier night?  If he’s looking to give his starters an extra breather before the Iron Bowl, Saban could start his second string against GSU and likely win by eight touchdowns.

His own private Idaho

So how much does Chris Peterson like coaching at Boise State?  In his case, you can put a price tag on it.

Recently, the State Board of Education unanimously approved a new five-year, $8 million contract for head football coach Chris Petersen. Under the contract, Petersen will make $1.28 million this year and an additional $200,000 if he is still head coach of the Broncos in February of next year.

Under his old contract, Petersen would have made $1.30 million this year and an additional $250,000 if he still holds his position in Feb. 2011.

That’s right.  The man took a pay cut after the most successful season in school history.

I can’t wait to see what’s in store for him if the Broncos play in the BCS title game this season.

The BCS, playoffs and Econ 101

One of the most amusing blind spots of extended playoff supporters and the people pushing for mid-major auto-qualifying in the BCS (outside of the title game, remember) is the law of supply and demand.  Despite that these folks are getting smacked in the face almost daily with the frenzy over conference expansion, which is totally driven by economics, they choose to be totally oblivious to the forces that drive the D-1 postseason.

That’s why, in response to an obvious point by the haves…

“Those six conferences have automatic qualification through the 2013-14 season by virtue of existing contracts with the bowls and ESPN,” BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said. “There are two ways that the conferences earn annual automatic qualification: either through market demand — that is, a bowl chooses to contract with one of the conferences — or by qualifying on the field (through the three criteria).”

the best those sympathetic to the cause of the have-nots can do is simply ignore the “market demand” argument, which is what the author of that piece does.  I mean, who needs all that pesky supply and demand crapola getting in the way of a good whine?

Equally befuddling to me is the argument put forth by Ron Morris that higher assistant coaches salaries are in impediment to a football playoff because… well, I’ll let him explain:

Understand, though, the more athletics departments become fiscally irresponsible, the more they push themselves away from a football playoff.  University presidents continue to point to escalating salaries as another example of how athletics departments are divesting themselves from college campuses.

That doesn’t make a lick of sense unless you believe that any form of a postseason playoff will be a net revenue loser for the Big 6.  On the other hand, if you’re an academic or an administrator who disapproves of that damned supply and demand stuff…

School presidents begrudgingly justified head coaching salaries that have reached three and four times greater than their own. But when an assistant coach such as Johnson makes $200,000 more than USC president Harris Pastides, it sends a strong signal to university presidents that college football is out of hand . . . and that a playoff system is pushed further and further to the back burner.

… maybe walking away from a playoff can be justified out of a sheer sense of spite.

All I know is that it’s a sad thing when a doofus like Hancock displays a better grasp of basic economic theory than the ivory tower folks do.

Monday morning buffet

Another week begins… brace yourselves.

• Based on in-conference point differential, 2005-9 was the Half-decade of the Gator.
• Herschel Walker doesn’t think much of Junior.
• Olin Buchanan makes the case that Arkansas’ defense has a long way to go – and in the SEC, that matters.
• An incoming member of Georgia’s 2010 class has a big weekend at Florida’s Track and Field Championships.
• A note of optimism about Georgia’s upcoming season, from a Florida beat writer.
• While I think most of Pete Fiutak’s column on Big Ten expansion is a stretch (no way the SEC considers adding any of the teams he lists, with the possible exception of Louisville), he’s spot on with this:  “Big Ten head honcho, Jim Delany, would never, ever, ever let the word expansion come out of the mouths of anyone associated with the league without there being some teeth behind it.”
• Bill Snyder, confirmed cupcake lover:  “Kansas State announced a three-game series beginning in 2014 with UT-San Antonio.” There’s nothing like finding a weak sister you can settle down with.
• Don’t talk to Paul Johnson about Iowa.
• And meet the newest entry to the Lexicon, PH™.